Those diesel gensets seem like a pretty good stopgap charging solution for desolate and remote areas. What percentage of the energy for EV's will come/does come from diesel? Infinitesimal. Barely worth thinking about.

Profits are down 99 percent. Not a typo. A near-total wipeout which triggered the wiping out of 12,500 jobs, the immediate suspension of manufacturing in Indonesia and Spain and an announcement that Japan’s second-largest car company will reduce its model lineup by at least 10 percent by 2022.

Nissan’s U.S. market share is down to 7.9 percent; it was 8.1 percent a year ago.

It is quite possible there won’t be a Nissan by 2022.

So, what’s gone awry?

One thing—a thing which is going awry generally—is the money being wasted on electric cars for which there is no market. Or rather, which there’s no money to be made from making.

Nissan’s Leaf, the company’s first electric car, cost Nissan almost as much money to develop as it continues to lose “selling” it. And when the federal subsidy for electric car “purchases” goes away, it will cost Nissan and everyone else “selling” electric cars even more as people decline to “buy” them at all.

Which will happen, because the ending of the subsidies amounts to a $7,500 effective increase in the cost to the buyer, the price of “green,” as it were.

Nissan et al will then have to resort to discounts of their own equivalent to the federal subsidy, just to get the electric Turduckens off their lots.

This would be no big deal if it were only a handful of electric Turduckens. Due to “climate change,” Nissan and everyone else has been forced to commit billions to the development of hundreds of thousands of electric cars they won’t be able to sell.

That is unless the ability of people to buy them somehow increases by 30-50 percent or more— this being the rough difference (all else being equal) between an electric car and an otherwise equivalent non-electric car.

Who’s going to ante up?

The going-away subsidy all by itself is equivalent in value to 3,125 gallons of regular unleaded at current prices (about $2.40 per gallon). That fills up a 12 gallon gas tank about 260 times — enough to take you 93,000 and change miles at 30 MPG.

However many people believe the sky is about to fall due to “climate change,” most aren’t going to walk away from what amounts to free fuel for nearly 100,000 miles of driving by not driving an electric car.

The 12,500 jobs that just went up in smoke, along with Nissan’s profits and possibly Nissan itself, are just the beginning.

A real scheisse show is percolating.

But there is a silk lining to this sow’s ear, for the moment.

It is that you stand to score a deal on any Nissan (excepting the Leaf). The news about Nissan’s precarious finances is already spreading like an oil slick on the ocean and dealers will be increasingly desperate to offload what they can while they can.

And here’s the crazy thing:

Much of what Nissan sells is actually good stuff. In part, because it hasn’t got much of the new stuff; things like turbo fours in big trucks and direct injection and ASS in everything.

Nissan is also the only car company whose new cars let you drive without “bucking up for safety.”

Well, without badgering you like an annoying mother-in-law via a buzzer that won’t shut up until you do.

That's a rubbish article. The Nissan Leaf is a rounding error in terms of the whole company. It's a North-American-centric article ... conditions in the rest of the world aren't necessarily the same as those in North America; notably they're serious about CO2 emissions rather than flippant and dismissive of it, they pay a lot more for fuel, and they're getting serious about controlling smog in urban areas to the extent of implementing congestion charges (London - EVs get a pass) or banning older higher-emitting vehicles from urban centres (EVs get a pass).

Nissan does indeed have some financial trouble, but it's not fair to put all the blame on the Leaf. They have a fair number of products in their lineup that are uncompetitive, outdated rubbish (and replacements are in the works for several of them). And, a global slowdown in motor vehicle sales is unsurprising given the unsustainable pace of the last few years.

I hate to hear this as they are one of the larger employers in my state. My first car was a Datsun B 210. As far as the Leaf they have refused to build it with active thermal management of the battery and slow to put out a 200 mile range version also. Definitely lower tier for Japanese manufacturers.

That's a rubbish article. The Nissan Leaf is a rounding error in terms of the whole company. It's a North-American-centric article ... conditions in the rest of the world aren't necessarily the same as those in North America; notably they're serious about CO2 emissions rather than flippant and dismissive of it, they pay a lot more for fuel, and they're getting serious about controlling smog in urban areas to the extent of implementing congestion charges (London - EVs get a pass) or banning older higher-emitting vehicles from urban centres (EVs get a pass).

Nissan does indeed have some financial trouble, but it's not fair to put all the blame on the Leaf. They have a fair number of products in their lineup that are uncompetitive, outdated rubbish (and replacements are in the works for several of them). And, a global slowdown in motor vehicle sales is unsurprising given the unsustainable pace of the last few years.

I had a Sentra for a rental car a few weeks back. I'm not sure they've upgraded anything in that car since I looked at buying one in 2005. They just seem to be stuck in the past. I agree that the disappearance of Nissan from the North American market would hardly be noticed.

I understand. Ford, Chevy, Toyota and Nissan all had them at one time. I had a Toyota and worked the heck out of that thing. But giant is in and tiny is out currently. I was hoping VW would do a mini truck with a diesel here in the US. I had even thought about the alh Jetta truck conversion at one time. Runonbeer was building one of those back some time ago.

Except that I like they still had small trucks for sale. I haven't looked at them in a while so I don't know how small they are any more. I miss small economy trucks like they used to have around.

They're all more midsized trucks these days. From what I read, the Frontier is at the bottom of the pack and Tacoma is at the top. Everyone else just kind of shuffles around the middle. Personally, I did not like how the Tacoma drove or the seat comfort. It's like the bolted the driver's seat directly to the floor. The last one I drove also had issues shifting into third. Took a two step shift up or down. Not sure that any of the recent updates have been anything more than lipstick.

Small trucks suffered for several reasons. Safety regulations, cost/price, and emissions regulations.

It is harder to get a tiny full frame conventional cab + bed pickup to pass crash tests reliably. Small unibody cars are MUCH easier. Once you get a giant full frame that is hard to design in the same type of crumple zones, you need size and mass. This is the main reason the Wrangler is SO HUGE now in comparison to what it used to be.

Just like tools, the same basic steps to make a big truck are needed to make a little truck. Case in point: The Ford Ranger came out in 1983. It was essentially the exact same thing as the F150 that was new for 1980. Just proportionally smaller in every dimension, aside from the cab height, as it still needed to be tall enough to fit a human. But if you lifted the two trucks up in the air, they were arranged exactly the same way underneath. The F truck got a standard I6 and optional V8, the Ranger got a standard I4 and an optional V6, again, a proportional difference. So as such, the individual pieces and steps to build the Ranger were the same. Material was (and is) cheap. So the cost difference to step up to an F150 really was not that much more. And given the fact that the few truly fuel efficient engines (all diesels, of course) that we had available to us back then were slow, stinky, etc. meant that fuel economy difference was not as vast either.

Modern emissions regulations keep the good, modern diesels either frightfully expensive or not available at all. Lack of options, or I should say, lack of options to NOT GET options, has also limited the appeal of these small trucks. You can go buy a stripper Silverado with a regular cab, long bed, and more than capable standard V6 engine... for LESS money than a Colorado, which forces you into an extended cab short bed, and a 4cyl engine which nobody has any of on the lot.

The poor Frontier gets bagged on my the automotive press as being "ancient" but I gotta tell ya, it is the ONLY Nissan product I'd consider, and it has not been ruined by the goofball French styling that the rest have (the entire Infiniti lineup is a vomit inducing failtrain). But even it is saddled with a narrow range of configurations and limited pump sucking engines.